We Came to Conquer
by CaideSin
Summary: It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles.


He's probably falling backwards again, for you never _can_ see where you're going; falling backwards into dark places.

There are people who would—Hmm, no, no one would reach out to him.

The immaterial is immaterial when you're trapped in a world of—Memories, really, memories and fragments and that's all he really is, slicing through the waters: a jewel fragment. There are feathers in his mouth, and aren't there always.

The sun is balanced on the edge of the world and isn't it always.

There's a time when he gets tired of being alone, jostled in himself; enough to drive one mad, really. One does not lose their autonomy so easily unless conquered and…

Roxas' laughter is echoing up out of Sora's throat and the flesh scratches raw.

There must be a word for this, for losing what you are and taking it back again. Perhaps it's redemption or baptism, but Roxas thinks of it as growing up.

He lives in Sora's dreams, in Sora's veins and Sora can't scratch him out.

Roxas crawls steadily up _dreamland's_ spine, fingers finding holds in nooks and crannies.

There witches out there, witches who can crawl inside your flesh and take you over from within. Roxas knows a witch, a sister who was different and yet the same, as much a part of Sora as Kairi and _himself_.

He reconstructs from the inside, reordering and intersecting and Sora begins to weep openly for it, for him and for what he's seen.

He's _seen_ the dark corners of the worlds, he's seen the beaten and the broken and he has lived with the _damned_ and Sora shudders in his sleep.

Roxas' smiles are beginning to force their way onto his face, into his teeth, tainting them an optic white.

He is beautiful, they think, as they bow down at his feet and a small king watches in fascination.

"You go your own way."

Roxas shifts languidly in the hollows of Sora's bones, snicker-and-snap.

The dreams play like films, shuddering to a close as they die one by one.

Roxas' eyes are beginning to show through to the outside world.

Sora is falling _backwards_ this time and he claws at the doves, they burst into feathers at his touch because the immaterial is immaterial and their borders mean so very little these days.

"No one reaches out when you're like this."

When you're your own worst enemy and friend. _Autonomy_ is not lost so easily but the playing field will never be even.

"You take a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Don't tell me you don't know how to play the game?"

Roxas has changed, Sora thinks as he falls. Roxas has _changed_ and he stands backlight by the vertigo sun (sunset-and-sunrise, who knows, who cares).

Sora has changed, and it is the same pair of eyes, an introspection of another.

"You."

They smile faintly, Roxas' smile which he has coaxed into Sora, touched and prodded and forced and made.

Sora begins to move with a new grace and his thoughts come at sharp angles and a small king watches him with resurgent pride and also _pity_.

"I don't know what to call you anymore," that is Riku's voice, balanced on a pinprick, his fears bleed on the carpets and Roxas' harsh insurgence makes him—_Nervous_, because he understands by association (fire and water, immolation and asphyxiation) but wonders why Sora survives when he fell so early on in the battle.

"Fire and I… have an agreement…"

Kairi does not fear, she watches as the traces of childhood leave Sora's face, the girls always do grow up so much faster and sometimes Sora sees the sun reflected (sunset-and-sunrise) in her eyes.

"The world isn't black and white, you know?"

Roxas spreads his wings lazily, and while Sora falls backwards into this darkness (unfamiliar, strangely unfamiliar for all he knows of _darkness_) he drifts.

"You know, there aren't any shadows without light and there is no light without fire."

Sora shudders and feels the emptiness. The pitch he knows, the sticky warmth, but this abyss is--

"Cold. No wonder."

Sora feels Roxas listening through him, tuning him slowly each night within his dreams, shaping his memories at dawn.

"Aren't you afraid?"

And Roxas drifts.

And no one knows their name anymore.

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers.  
**


End file.
